


B is for Blood

by residentdogenthusiast



Series: A-Z Prompts for the Hamilsquad [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Blood and Injury, F/F, Mild Gore, mentions of abuse, mentions of domestic violence, mentions of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 13:49:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/residentdogenthusiast/pseuds/residentdogenthusiast
Summary: Hemophobia is the extreme, irrational fear of blood.





	B is for Blood

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING Mentions of sexual assault, physical abuse, and blood/gore. Tread lightly, guys.

Maria _hated_ blood. No, a better word would be loathed. Detested. Even the tangy metallic smell of the stuff would either send rage or fear hurdling through her veins. She physically recoiled at the sight, cringed at the mention of it. Blood brought back so many terrible memories—memories that were tainted and splotched with sticky red. Especially when it was coming from _her_.

She had loathed it all of her life—mostly because it had _dominated_ her life for a very long time. Her distaste for the sight of it had began when she was a little girl. Back when she was so small and should’ve been so innocent, on hands and knees and scrubbing at the dried blood from where another one of her mother’s boyfriends had beaten to a pulp or violently assaulted her or her sisters. All while her mother turned a blind eye, of course. Those men had paid the bills in exchange for the purity, innocence and childhood of her and her older sisters so her mother had given it to them without hesitation. And every time, they’d left behind broken china dolls in the shape of young girls and deep red puddles.

It had only gotten worse when James Reynolds showed up on her mother's doorstep and she’d been shoved into his arms. “That’s your husband now, Maria, treat him well.”

Those had been the last words uttered to the girl—just barely seventeen, mind you, which was nowhere old enough to be someone’s wife—by her mother before James had taken her to her new home and life. He had been no better than the men that her egg donor—referring to that foul woman as a mother would be giving her more credit than she deserved—had let use her. Sometimes, James beat her so bad that it seemed that all that was left of her would be a splash of vivid red blood against bright white tiles. James had been the defining factor of her hatred of blood. He’d given her a daughter, who’d come out of her womb covered in the stuff. He’d given her purple and yellow bruises and cuts that spilled waterfalls of deep red. James had destroyed her, and any phobia she _didn’t_ have of blood.

It got to the point where she couldn’t even _give_ blood without her stomach churning, and that was in a controlled environment with people who would never hurt her.

So now, with a _literal fucking knife_ twisted in her stomach and things getting a little hazy, one could only deduct how she was feeling.

It was probably her fault that she was in this predicament in the first place. Eliza and Laf both had lectured her about walking home from work alone, but she’d been far too hardheaded to listen.

“Don’t walk home late without one of us, Ria,” Eliza had pleaded, only to be met with deep brown eyes rolling.

Lafayette had added, “Yeah. You’re gorgeous, and you know that at night time, predators will have no qualms about taking whatever they want from you because they believe pretty girls can’t fight back. Call us to come pick you up, please.”

Well, Lafayette wasn’t _always_ the most sensitive, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t right. Still though, she’d balked at his words and rolled her eyes again. She _always_ took that same route, and nothing had happened before. Not very often during the day, but once or twice. She’d been fine before. Besides, this was an extremely nice neighborhood—she purposefully used the shortcut through there knowing that fact—with a fairly diverse group of people living there.

What was the _worst_ that could happen?

Maria doesn’t know if it was irony or a sign that she’d stopped to admire the LGBT flag hanging proudly in one house's bedroom window a few houses before she was attacked.

She struggles to remember the details of the assault, pulling her mind away from useless memories. Four men, one of them with an accent… French? German? One of those. She knows he’d sounded similar to Lafayette, but not quite. They’d been talking in another language while they hit and beat her, and then they’d suddenly gone quiet. As if they realized they wanted to kill her. However the men hadn’t done so, which Maria could thank her lucky stars for—after all, she had a wife and daughter to get home to. They’d simply jacked her purse with her and Eliza’s rent money and took all of her jewelry before running.

Maria can’t decide if this was a hate crime—she had been wearing the giant lesbian pride pin that John had purchased for her on her purse, and her shirt was very obviously a wearable pride flag—or just a robbery, but her mind begins to lean towards the former. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that these men had simply attacked her for no other reason than to steal her things. She couldn’t think that if she hadn’t been in that place, at that time, none of this would’ve happened. That would’ve been a _literal_ insult to injury.

“Miss? Miss, are you okay?” a voice, that of a teenager actually, asks. She opens her eyes from where she’d closed them against the pain, her train of thought derailing and her eyes focusing on something other than the pools of blood forming at her heels. “Oh! Oh my God, you’re bleeding!”

When the child gets closer, Maria sees that it’s a teenage boy. He couldn’t be older than fourteen, maybe fifteen. With curly brown hair that he pushed behind his ears, a smattering of freckles all over his visible skin, and wide chocolate eyes that examine Maria with both fear and what seems to be worry. He looks everything a high school jock stereotype, with a Letterman's jacket on and football that is quickly discarded into nearby grass.

Maria frowns. _Grass?_ These bastards had assaulted her behind someone’s _house_? How humiliating.

“Miss, are you alright? What do you need?” the boy asks dumbly, probably still in shock on what he’d discovered.

“I--oh, shit,” Maria groans as the words that leave her mouth send waves of pain through her body. Resting her head against the house, she allows her eyes to close again and a scowl to befall her lips. Any other time, she’d be a little kinder in her words—living with her wife had worn off on her—but right now, she just wants a hospital, her daughter, her Liza and a few painkillers. When she speaks again, her eyes are opened and forming a pointed glare. “Do I look okay?… I need help… fucking medical attention…”

“O-okay!” The boy says, before taking off—disappearing out of sight.

“No! No, wait come back!” Maria shouts, taking her hand away from the stab wound. When waterfalls of blood begin spilling out over her legs and heels, she places her hand back where it was to keep her guts in. Once again, she wonders if the boy noticed her shirt and decided to leave her for dead. She wonders if her newfound pride in who she is, and who she loves, has killed her. Sometimes—very rarely, but the times still occur—she cursed who she was. Cursed that she couldn’t be satisfied with being James’ punching back. Cursed that she had always had her affliction for girls, cursed that she couldn’t remain quiet about who she was. She had to wear her pride on a fucking shirt… her heart on her fucking sleeve…

If she had forever buried the fact that she was a lesbian and stayed with her ex-husband, maybe uninformed teenage boys wouldn’t leave her to bleed out behind the house of someone who made more in one day than she did in a year.

Sliding down against the house, painting it in a streak of deep red, Maria groans. She thinks of all the things she’d forgotten to do that day. Thinks of all the things Susan had begged her to do with her—like play mermaids in the backyard pool or paint their toenails together—, thinks of the silly argument she’d had with Eliza over not loading the fucking dishwasher. She thinks that she’ll never see any of her friends again, hopes that Liza would take care of her little Susie. Her daughter was young and clumsy and too much like her mother and father but maybe Liza could teach her to be better than James. Be better than Maria herself. Maybe, Susie could finally have a decent moth—

“There! There she is! Help her, please!” the familiar voice of the teenage boy says, once again sending her train of thought to a crashing halt. Maria looks up to find an older man and woman, probably the boy's parents, hovering over her with worry. She can’t help but notice the similarities they have to Eliza and Alexander. “I found her behind George’s house when I was returning his football. She… she doesn’t look good, Mama.”

“Miss? Miss, I need you to tell me your name,” the woman says with a stern but kind voice, removing Maria’s hand so she can examine the wound. “My name is Phillipa, and I’m a paramedic and my husband, here? His name is Lin and he’s a doctor. We’re going to keep you alive until help comes, alright? Tell me, what’s your name?”

Maria’ eyes find the boy, who looks extremely worried and even more nervous. He’s awkwardly fumbling with the zipper on his jacket, watching his parents in action. “You… you came back…”

He frowns, looks to her face. “‘Course I did. I couldn’t leave you here to die! Now you gotta give my Mom your name now, okay, Miss? She’s gonna help you, I promise. She’s the best darn paramedic out there.”

“Maria. Maria Schuyler, I—thank you. Thank you all.”

“No problem, ma’am,” the father speaks this time, smoothing her hair away from her face and using his hands to tear open her shirt and better access the wound. “It’s my job to help. It’s gonna be alright.”

With her brain knowing that help was here and she could finally relax, Maria closes her eyes and allows herself to drift off. She’d be alright. Everything would be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> I want you all to know that I do read your comments, and they are my fuel to keep producing material. So please, comment away with whatever your fancy is.
> 
> P.S. Did you see my little reference to the Hamilcast? Did you catch that? Ayye.
> 
> P.P.S If you're wondering why Maria didn't automatically assume the boy had gone for help, you have to understand that up until she met the Hamilsquad, everyone in her life screwed her over. She has trust issues. So she automatically assumes the worst of people before the best, due to the trauma that her early life left her with.


End file.
